Re: The Apple ][ was crap

["william strutts" <wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com>]

"Bruce Baker" <Bruce.Baker@juge.com> wrote in message
ec6_200107171136@juge.com">news:ec6_200107171136@juge.com...

> WEll, I like Coco's they were cheap and you could use two joysticks at a
time,
> making them fair when playing One on One or road race games, or football
games.
>
> I admit to being more interested in games and educational.  There was no
> equivalent to Appleworks, there was something like it, I can't recall the
name.
>  But it had very little memory.  The database could hold maybe 50 things,
and
> that depended on the size of each entry.  I tried my first attempts at
modeming
> on a Coco machine.  Until recently there was still a Coco BBS in Houston,
> during the peek there were often more Coco boards than Apple 2 boards.

We had Deskmate from Tandy.  We also had VIP Library with a real
spreadsheet, wordprocessor and database. There were several good
shareware telecom programs for the Coco that could do xmodem and
ymodem.  Plus there were a ton of other great Coco aftermarket software
and hardware.  The mandatory Rainbow was a great source of new
software and hardware products for the Coco.

> But they kept blowing fuses or chips.  Repairs cost more than a new
computer.
> I had young kids they were definitely not child proof!!

I ran a Coco for six years and never had a spec of problems.  Well with
kids they could blow the computer because the cartridge bus was not
buffered and had a 12 volt line.  If you pulled it out while the machine
was running, you fried the computer.  I suppose that would not be
child proof.

> So when a neighbor wanted to sell his unenhanced //e with two disk drives
and a
> cheap printer for $600, I jumped at it.  (about 1986)  He moved on to a
Dos 3.3
> wintel machine I believe.
>
> I never had another repair again so soon the Coco was in the closet and
was
> later all sold off.  That even though I had a friend who worked for Radio
Shack
> and was always bringing me discarded software and even hardware.  I had
quite a
> collection.  But the machine was not reliable.

I know tons of Coco people who would refute that statement as they
have had great luck with their coco's.  I have never had any reliability
problems with mine.  There is quite a following of people still using
their machines today.  It was like the Apple II--a great machine for
the hardware hack.

--
--
William R. Strutts - wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com - Whatever!

C'est moi!  http://www.facelink.com/wrstrutts

Just hacking away...

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